The move to 7nm pushes design to new limits

Posted in: Press Coverage by
Sandra Liu
| Comments Off on The move to 7nm pushes design to new limitsTuesday, July 11, 2017

While chipmakers are keen to move to the 7nm node, the use of ‘tricks’ to extend the life of optical lithography, amidst a continuing wait for EUV, is piling up the design challenges.

“In the last five to six years, we have gone through six to seven nodes, starting with variants of 28nm,” said Balaji Velikandanathan, quality engineer at Qualcomm, in a panel session at June’s Design Automation Conference. “We are talking about [moving from] inception to tapeout in nine months and [introducing] a new process node every year.”

Qualcomm wants to move to 7nm to push frequency to 3GHz and reduce power by 30%, compared to the 10nm Snapdragon 835 used in phones such as the HTC U11.